Indices

In ERM, a work consists of a discrete text by Ruskin, as expressed in all available witnesses. The entry path to a work in the archive defaults to the workʼs Apparatus Page, which organizes information about the work (e.g., about the workʼs available witnesses and manuscript sources, title, genre, date, composition and publication history, and other discussion). The Apparatus Page also links to the workʼs Text Pages, consisting of witness transcriptions (manuscript and print), corresponding facsimiles, and supporting annotation. (See The Plan of the Archive.)

In the Works Indices, works are listed both by first line and by title. Titles are assigned to works according to rules in System of Title Citation for Works. Titles in the indices include those for both single and composite texts—the latter including, for example, a multipart travelogue, sermon series, poetry anthology, or scientific dictionary. If the individual parts of a composite text are themselves entitled, these titles are also listed in the Works Indices, but the link will take the reader to the Apparatus Page for the composite work.

The current Title Index is arranged alphabetically. Eventually, the archive will offer Title Indices that are arranged chronologically and topically.

Manuscripts are physical documents manifesting Ruskinʼs texts—that is, they consist of various physical witnesses of works. While many manuscripts manifest only a single witness of a single work, more typically a manuscript manifests many texts. The available manuscripts described and facsimilied in the archive are surveyed in Overview of the Manuscripts.

The entry path to a manuscript in the archive defaults to its Apparatus Page, which organizes information about the manuscript (e.g., about the manuscriptʼs title, location, provenance, description, contents, date, and other discussion). The Contents section of the Apparatus Page, which lists the works contained in a manuscript, links to those worksʼ Apparatus Pages.

In the Manuscripts Indices, manuscripts are listed by titles assigned to them according to rules explained in System of Title Citation for Manuscripts.

Ruskin often formed texts into groups, by compiling anthologies of texts or organizing texts into a single composite work. In ERM, this kind of group is encoded as a corpus. Our aim in encoding and describing corpora is to express the textual forms resulting from Ruskinʼs impulse to anthologize, while complying with the TEI standards for XML (see Editorial and Encoding Rationale and Methodology).

Listed in the Corpora Index are titles of projects that Ruskin clearly developed as distinct corpora. The list includes titles that overlap with some found in the Works Indices, since Ruskin conceived of some groups of texts as a single composite work. Other titles in the Corpora Index are nearly coterminous with titles found in the Manuscripts Index, Ruskin sometimes using the physical boundaries of a major manuscript to help define a corpus. Indeed, in the encoding procedures of ERM, any major manuscript forms a kind of corpus, albeit a miscellaneous one, and can itself be made up of other corpora. Listed here, however, are manuscripts that Ruskin identified as distinct anthologies or composites.

Titles of copora default to an Apparatus Page, which in some cases is identical to a Work Apparatus, but which in other cases such as poetry anthologies assembles information unique to a collection (e.g., title, contents, date, organizing themes, and other discussion). The Apparatus Page links to the corpus witness, or in some cases to multiple witnesses or corpora that constitute a version or versions of the collection.

If, in the encoding of the early manuscripts, we discover an intervention by a writer other than Ruskin or if we find that Ruskin transcribed without substantially altering a text by another writer, we encode and class these texts as works by others. Just as for works by Ruskin, these links default to an Apparatus Page.

ERM supplies commentary in a number of forms, which are too varied to be listed here in the indices, and which are best accessed via the siteʼs Search function or through links on the Text and Apparatus pages.